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17 October 2007
Web 2.0 Summit - “Web Two Point No: and you thought Microsoft was Bad”
Posted by Paul Miller at October 17, 2007 06:59 PM
Day 1, Session 2, and Jonathan Zittrain “will both highlight and challenge counterintuitive arguments that Web 2.0 architectures pose distinct problems for competition, innovation, and freedom.” Here goes, then.
Incidentally, there's a flow of twittering from the conference over here.
Jonathan - professor of Law at Harvard and Oxford.
Feeling 'contrarian' about Web 2.0 because;
Gone from 'sterile' to 'generative' technologies during the 20th century. Tabulation of 1880 census boring, and Hollerith's invention of punch card for use by census interviewers revolutionised process. Business model was innovative, too; rented machines to government for census, rather than selling them.
But IBM mainframes and Brother word processors were closed; they did what they were built to do, and there were intermediaries between you and them.
Generative shift to products like the Apple II - you could write the software you wanted to run, without recourse to the vendor. 'Open Software' almost irrelevant here - Windows and Linux will run any software you choose to write for them, so both are generative and enabling.
“There's no main menu for the Internet”
'Hourglass Architecture' of the Internet applies equally to the generic PC; carrying any traffic.
Poster child of modern devices; the iPhone. But it's essentially the same model as the sterile start screens of the Brother word processor, Compuserve, and other closed environments we believe we left behind.
Zittrain points to the need to license hairdressers etc... yet anyone can write code that millions download and run on their own machines. Does this make sense?
Points to Google and Facebook Terms and Conditions - both of which require certain behaviours, non-discrediting of the Platform provider, etc... and they reserve the right to begin charging or terminate access at any point. Zittrain asks if we would have accepted similar Terms before developing on Windows, etc.
Requirement for global regulability raises concerning issues. Eg tethered devices... EchoStar required by Tivo to disable functionality in machines already bought by their customers, remotely and down the wire. Customers of EchoStar, who have bought the product and recorded programmes with it in good faith lose all access to them without warning.
“The move to Web 2.0 is a move in which your relationship as a consumer/developer is constant with the vendor; the vendor can change that relationship at any time, or be required to do so by a higher authority such as government.” As with financial advice, Web 2.0 apps can get better or worse... ? ;-)
What do we do?
Move from privacy policy to [data] portability policy, to ensure that an individual can extract their data from an app, should it change in ways that they do not like.
Sometimes it might be advantageous to 'cut the tether'. Eg hardware makers not liable when their machines are used for illegal filesharing because they are no longer liable for use once the device leaves the factory. That's no longer true online, as they are deemed to be in an ongoing and endless relationship. Maybe there is value in not assuming that every app is constantly evolving...
API neutrality would be good...
Semantic Web - structured data on the web would free innovation, and allow anyone to build apps that leverage the sort of intelligence that Google and other large providers gain for themselves from their internal 'Database of Intentions' at the moment. Ties in with our 'Web of Intentions' ideas, which is good...
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